Search canberratimes:

Search in:

Brace yourself for the workforce revolution

In the next few years, many more of us could be working from home. Photo: Michele Mossop

Picture this: within a decade or so, another million or so Australians will work for themselves. Many more who work for big companies will telework from home, at least for part of the week. Another group will operate as fly-in-fly-out workers, moving between interstate and offshore projects.

Welcome to the future of work, a journey that promises to be equal parts thrilling and terrifying, when one considers how little is being done to prepare for such powerful long-term trends.

What’s your view?

How will the workplace change in the next decade or two?

What big trends will redefine work for millions of Australians?

Are we doing enough to prepare for them now?

Advertisement

Consider Asia’s growth. The Federal Government’s Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, released in October, presented a terrific roadmap for this country to prosper in the greatest trend of them all: the rise and rise of Asia.

But what will become of the recommendations? Will it become another grandiose government document that gets lots of headlines and then collects dust on the shelf, or will real policy be developed to put some meat on the White Paper’s bones and help Australian business win in Asia?

It is obvious that more Australians will spend a much bigger chunk of their working life flying back and forth to Asia in the next decade, much like resource sectors workers who live far away from their work do now. Business people, professional service providers, academics, senior public servants … the list goes on of those who will spend a lot more time in Asia in coming decades.

How are we planning for this incredible trend? Are we creating a more mobile workforce, or reducing labour mobility through outdated state taxes and poor transport infrastructure planning? How can we be expected to fly in and out of Asia, when travelling between Sydney and Melbourne in the same day is often a nightmare because of our hopeless airports and airlines?

What about potential social problems if more people spend more time away from their children?

Consider how the Asian Century will affect how we study. Today, hundreds of thousands of Asian students live and study in Australia – a great achievement for our higher education sector. When another billion people in Asia enter the middle classes within two decades, my guess is that we will be the ones increasingly travelling there to teach, and many more Australian students will study at universities abroad. Again, how are we preparing for this trend?

What about teleworking? Working more from home will become vital as the population grows and our capital cities become overwhelmed by traffic, because of poor transport infrastructure planning and the lack of a clear national infrastructure policy.

More companies will encourage teleworking to cut costs and boost productivity, and workers will embrace it for lifestyle reasons. As super-fast internet becomes a reality, it will increasingly seem odd why so many people trudge back and forth to town each day for work, sometimes losing hours in the process and adding to city congestion and pollution, when the same work can be done from home in far less time.

As with the Asia trend, there seems to be plenty of talk but not enough action to make teleworking a bigger feature of the workforce. A National Telework Week is better than nothing, but we need real policy, not marketing events, to capitalise on teleworking’s potential.

It’s such a no-brainer: in time, more people working from home for all or part of the week means a happier, healthier, more productive workforce; fewer cars on the road, less congested capital cities and less pollution; and more vibrant suburbs and communities during the working week.

Imagine if local councils showed initiative and tried to connect home-based workers in their area, by creating business hubs and shared work spaces. Or if we thought more about the home-based work trend in building design in the city and suburbs.

Many of these home-based workers will run a business. It’s not hard to see the 2.1 million small businesses in Australia (at June 2011) rising to 3 million in a decade or two as more people start a business. Again, what are we doing to plan for this workforce change?

Obviously, these changes will not affect all workers. The majority will never fly back and forth to Asia, telework from home, or start a business. But these and other social and economic trends will redefine how millions of Australians work and interact in the next two decades.

We need more debate on what the workforce will look like by 2025 and some genuine policy to help get us there. We’ll be there before you know it, and by then it will be too late if Australia continues to talk rather than act on these big workforce trends.

20 comments so far

I currently work from home 4 days a week and fly to and from Sydney 1 day a week and have been doing so for 2 years. The success of this ultimately comes down to manages and employers willingness to entertain and support the arrangement. There is still a real mental barrier for people/companies to overcome in acceping this types of arrangements and that a person is working not on 'holiday' when they are not in the office.

Commenter

Damien

Location

Coffs Harbour

Date and time

February 12, 2013, 1:05PM

Teleworking is a cheap, efficient and productive way for companies to reduce costs and for employees to circumvent the tyranny of commuting. It is however very dependant on access to fast broadband. I have a 12Mbit ADSL2+ broadband connection which is adequate for running server side applications but is inadequate for video conferencing. The connection is also susceptible to peak periods when the performance drops to below acceptable and I have to work offline. Australia currently has the 24th slowest broadband out of 33 OECD countries. If we are serious about teleworking the NBN has to be at the core of the discussion.

Commenter

Jonathan

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

February 12, 2013, 2:25PM

It is likely that the trends are evident.

Complications. Increasing casualisation leads to problems with getting a mortgage; stable income (and so lifestyle esp. for kids).I suspect there will be more hubs - to help separation of work from home and for socialising.Work that only people (not computers) can do tends to be poorly paid - aged care, child care, massage. The highly paid design stuff is a very small minority.Work intruding into personal time leading to an ongoing instability and family chaos. (These changes suit mobile singles not young children who want time with their parents - in the majority of cases).The new arrangements will likely benefit those who currently have the power (the employers in most cases). This is a no brainer.

Commenter

Evan

Location

Sydney

Date and time

February 12, 2013, 8:23PM

As more and more "mainstream" businesses turn to online retailing of their products, so the shift in employment will turn to "contractor" arrangements.There will come a day when all but physical tasks will be done from either someone's home or rented business premises as all work that can be outsourced inevitably will be.The upside is the utopian work/life balance.The downside is that remuneration for this type of contractual work will become more and more commission, or performance based, or both, and income will not be guaranteed, as it is now if in full time employment.I can envisage a day when part of the school curriculum entails "successful telemarketing".Either way....its coming...

Commenter

xercxes

Location

Clarence Town

Date and time

February 12, 2013, 8:34PM

Agree with comments, issue is not those who want to work out of the office, but management and Australia's third world internet. Too many in management are (wilfully) ignorant of technology, have a "silo" mentality, prefer the the hierarchies and status inside organisations, and need for many to get out of the house (wearing a suit, tie etc.).

Commenter

Andrew

Location

Antalya & Budapest & Yarrawonga

Date and time

February 13, 2013, 3:54AM

Damien, As an employer, I would be happy to entertain and support work from home arrangements for anyone willing to work as a contractor. Isn't that a fair (work) compromise?

Commenter

Joe

Date and time

February 13, 2013, 11:10AM

The reason it won't happen is because managers will lose most. And managers are self serving under achieving sicophants who excel at manipulation.

Commenter

AM

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

February 13, 2013, 11:53AM

I work for a state government department. Even though they love to way lyrical about their "commitment to work life balance" and repeatedly boast about their "flexible work arrangements" the reality is far from that.

city rail try to encourage commuters to travel outside peak hour by offering "off peak tickets" after 9 am, but most state government 'core hours" state you have to be in by 9:30 at the latest, too bad if you live more than half an hour away.

The federal and state governments keep coming out with these ideas and initiatives and get all warm and fuzzy talking about it all, but the reality is that they can't or won't implement it in their own departments, or HR and middle management are stuck in the mind set of 'bums on seats" and start times as being a reflection of the quality of your work.

It should be that your boss has to prove why you need to be in the office by a certain time or at all, not the other way around. I have no problem being in by a certain time if you work in customer service or your have specific office contact hours for the public, but when your job mostly involves working on your own on projects that are most emailed to you, does it really matter when you get in? or where you work from? what is the point in being crammed on a peak hour train just to do what I could be doing from home?

Commenter

S

Date and time

February 13, 2013, 1:01PM

We have a couple of teleworkers, one living in the city where we work and another overseas. The overseas worker is part-time but is quite responsive, while the local worker on the other hand can go missing for days, and as she is quite senior, her expertise is greatly missed in our casual meetings and general office management. Ultimately, whether teleworking works depends on the worker and how they are managed.

Commenter

Dazza

Date and time

February 13, 2013, 3:09PM

We have a couple of teleworkers, one living in the city where we work and another overseas. The overseas worker is part-time but is quite responsive, while the local worker on the other hand can go missing for days, and as she is quite senior, her expertise is greatly missed in our casual meetings and general office management. Ultimately, whether teleworking works depends on the worker and how they are managed.